Channeling Capablanca

After some rigmarole regarding pairings throughout the week, there was another unexpected absence on Thursday and several matchups had to be changed. I only briefly looked up an anti-London/Barry system in preparation for Black against one opponent, only to have SwissSys give me White this week.

I played my usual uninspired Botvinnik system against which my opponent seemed to have a coherent setup, wasting no time playing f5. I missed a couple chances to keep my opening edge and allowed my e-pawn to get isolated which led to a worse late middlegame. Between moves 19 and 29, we liquidated three minors, two rooks, and a queen for each side and I suddenly had an advantageous pawn endgame.

I felt quite pleased with myself, like I had channeled Capablanca’s spirit to manufacture an endgame win out of nothing but a better king position. But of course the postmortem dashed all that. The precision required to play great chess just wasn’t there, notably 36.b5?. Instead of being worthy of The Chess Machine or the Iceman I aspire to be, I was just a lucky bastard whose opponent failed to find the swindle. One Capablanca quote goes, “A good player is always lucky.”